The Critic is Britain's new highbrow monthly current affairs magazine for politics, art and literature. Dedicated to rigorous content, first rate writing and unafraid to ask the questions others won't.
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Picking at old wounds
The Critic
Letters • Write to The Critic by email at letters@thecritic.co.uk including your address and telephone number
What would Miss Hamlyn say? • The prestigious lectures she instituted were intended to laud the excellence of British law but is that law still praiseworthy?
Woman About Town
PESTON’S INBOX
AN INDEFENSIBLE DEFENCE POLICY • An ever-expanding welfare budget and disastrous MoD procurement make a mockery of Britain’s strategic ambitions and its view of itself as a world power
A POLICE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL • Is it any wonder that Britain’s forces are mired in a “two-tier policing” controversy when officer training is disproportionately focused on political correctness?
Keeping us on message • Anonymous exposes the secretive government propaganda unit dedicated to singing the praises of multiculturalism
Banish the bullshitters • Vacuous business-speak is not merely irritating, it can lead to bad decisions and bad outcomes
Labour’s mercurial kingmaker? • In his brief political career, Josh Simons has been a Corbyn aide, a Starmerite, a controversial think tank head and the man who gave up his safe Makerfield seat for Andy Burnham, so who is …
IT’S TIME TO SEE BREXIT THROUGH • We underestimated the Remain zealots with the consequence that we are still in the tractor beam of the EU. The only way to get our country functioning again is for the next government to summon the energy to finish the job
KILLING WITH KINDNESS • The MoD’s drive for a net zero military is a folly that will harm Britain’s security and do little to halt climate change.
EVERYDAY LIES WITH THEODORE DALRYMPLE
Sex, success and failure • Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy talks to Sarah Ditum about sex, success and failure, pseudo-intellectualism, posing naked for a magazine and setting up his own record label
Tied up in Notts: how a great university fails
Breaking the mould • Sebastian Milbank says the closure of the famous Denby pottery factory betrays the nation’s wider malaise of short-term political thinking and a lack of strategic vision
A VERY AMERICAN BIRTHDAY PARTY • GREEN’S AMERICA Dominic Green says Donald Trump’s brash cage-fighting event on the White House lawn is a fitting 250th anniversary celebration. Today’s USA is excess all areas, and it always was
Out with the new, in with the old • Ditching ancient traditions in the name of “progress” is actually a retrograde step
The man who defied the bureaucrats • Tom Rolt’s rescue of the Talyllyn Railway 75 years ago provided an enduring and never-more-important model of how ordinary people can stand up against the homegenisation of our culture
Our AI overlords will destroy bigots
A plan to fix our towns • Nicholas Boys Smith suggests how the UK’s devastated urban landscape might be revitalised
The Critic Profile David Lean • A titan of the cinema whose influence over today’s greats is obvious, despite the fact that his public standing never matched his industry reputation
Hector Savage One-time enfant terrible
ANCIENT BONES OF CONTENTION • Eleanor Harmsworth reports on the burgeoning and irregulated market for dinosaur skeletons which some academics want shut down
Rage against the dying of the night • Jonathan Glancey mourns the loss of the enchanting, soft-lit splendour of London after dark
Adam Dant on …
STUDIO • LORNA MAY...